When the great German geographer August Petermann called
the botanist/explorer Ferdinand von Mueller "the Humboldt of Australia,"
what did he have in mind? Elaborating the circumstances of his doing so gives
us a new view of Alexander von Humboldt's image among nineteenth-century
scientists who declared themselves to be his followers and raises the question of
how closely this might have corresponded with the notion of "Humboldtian
science" that has been developed by present-day historians of science.